


Infection

by prettyboydotexe



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Zombies, more tags added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyboydotexe/pseuds/prettyboydotexe
Summary: A sudden heavy knocking at the front door“Is this the di Angelo residence?” The men at the door were definitely not Metro Chinese. They stood on the stoop in full hazard gear, one with a military police badge already held up in lieu of greeting. “Sorry, kids, but you’ve got to come with us."





	1. Patient Zero

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of just a test run for now.  
> I've got a lot planned for this so hopefully I can actually write it??  
> Ha yeah right.  
> Anyway enjoy!! I'll most more later  
> Off to class

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edits: Just minor grammatical and spelling mistakes!

The bake sale had been a qualified success as far as the PTSO was concerned. Not only had they made enough sales to fund the band for the rest of the school year, but also to buy new uniforms and replace select instruments that no longer worked. Bianca was ecstatic, having been a band kid herself in high school, and had drug Nico to go thank Mrs. Fernandez personally in the parking lot.

Mrs. Fernandez was a small, portly woman, a mother of four straight-A, AP students and sports stars, as well as a seasoned world traveler. Her hair was always in a severe bun; which Nico couldn’t help but assume was the cause of her never ending smile. She was a nice lady, always welcoming and willing to help the di Angelo kids after their mother passed away. It was her who had cooked for them and made sure they went to bed on time while their father was away on business, which was often these days.

Nico never would’ve even considered her to be the reason for the world to fall to pieces.

They found her standing in the center of the gymnasium, directing the cleanup efforts of students and parents alike. The PTSO didn’t have an official president or leader of any kind, but still, no one disobeyed Mrs. Fernandez, even the principal, Mr. D, was terrified of her.

“Hey, Mrs. Fernandez, anything we can help with?” Bianca asked as they approached, dragging Nico behind her by his shirt sleeve. She was facing away from them, her hip leaning on one of the few still-standing folding tables, as she turned to look at them, Nico saw at once something wasn’t quite right.

Her normally glowing amber skin was greyish and dull, her eyes bloodshot, and a certain tightness took over her features. She looked downright sickly, not like the jubilant Mrs. Fernandez they all knew at all.

“Are you feeling alright?” Nico asked, pulling his sleeve from Bianca’s grip while she was distracted. He’d known her for years, ever since they’d moved to New York eight years ago and she showed up at their door with a pie and a smile, and in all those years, he’d never seen her get so much as a head cold. She was the textbook definition of healthy.

“I’m fine, dear, I’m just a little stuffy,” she smiled stiffly, wrapping the sleeves of her cardigan over her hands. “I think we’re about done here, actually, once they get the rest of these tables folded and loaded up. Thank you, though.”

        “Sounds like they’re got it handled then, so why don’t you go home?” Bianca seemed to share his concern, it wasn’t often she got ill, after all. “Maybe some rest’ll help you get cleared up? I’m sure all the dust in here isn’t helping, who knows when the last time the janitors had time to get through here was.”

“Ah, I’ll be alright. Besides, if I don’t stick around to make sure these bozos actually work and don’t goof off, who will?”

“Nico and I will! We don’t have anything to do tonight, right Neeks? We’ll make sure everything gets done.”

“What lovely children you are,” Mrs. Fernandez laughed, cupping their cheeks with her hands. “I am feeling a bit run down, are you sure you’ve got things handled here? I can always stay.”

“We’ve got this, mama Fernandez, go home and rest, yeah? We’ll come and check on you later tonight.”

“Alright, if you’re sure…” It spoke volumes for how badly she must have felt, when she left will little to no argument. Mrs. Fernandez was fiery and persistent, so leaving early meant she really must have been sick. She left with her keys in hand and purse on her shoulder, waving to them from the gymnasium doorways as they shooed her off.

“Okay! Let’s get to work” Bianca grinned, and Nico swore he heard everyone in the gym whimper.

 

* * *

 

The two di Angelo kids didn’t get back home until after six o’clock that evening, as Bianca had insisted on staying until every last inch of the gymnasium sparkled. Nico couldn’t really fault her for it, it’s what Mrs., Fernandez would’ve done, and it was the least they could do for her. Nico even helped, loading the folding tables into the back of Coach Hadid’s truck with Emily Fernandez, the cheer captain and the second eldest of the Fernandez clan.

“Whataya want for dinner? Pizza?”

“We had pizza yesterday. I want Chinese.”

“We had Chinese Tuesday.”

“So?”

“Fine, but you have to call it in,” Bianca threw herself onto the couch, flicking the TV to Ancient Aliens as she spoke. “The delivery dude always tries to hit on me. I don’t think he understands the concept of ‘gay’.”

As Nico was on the phone with Metro Chinese, both his and Bianca’s notifications began to buzz incessantly. Bianca sat up from her horizontal position on the couch, scrolling through the messages on her phone as she got them. It wasn’t until he’d hung up and checked his own messages that he figured out why she looked so startled.

“Mrs. Fernandez is in the hospital?”

“Yeah. Emily says she collapsed suddenly… I thought she looked ill, but that’s…” Bianca worried her lip, her dark brows furrowed together. “We’ll go check up on her after the food gets here. I don’t like the look of this.”

On average, it took Metro fifteen minutes to get to their little townhouse outside of the city. After twenty, Nico checked his phone for any updates. Nothing.

“Huh, I wonder what’s keeping them,” he was seated with his sister on the couch, her legs on top of his after a truly grueling battle for the middle cushion to stretch out on.

“It’s probably traffic or something. Channel Six says it’s getting pretty bad right now, apparently there’s emergency crews all over the main highway,” there was a sharp, loud knocking at the door suddenly, and Nico jumped. “That’s probably them now. My wallet’s on the table.”

Nico wormed his way off the couch, grabbing his sister’s wallet off the table as he went. The knocking never stopped.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he grumbled, unlocking the deadbolt, already digging out a twenty as he threw the door open. “What is it? Fifte-”

“Is this the di Angelo residence?” The men at the door were definitely not Metro Chinese. They stood on the stoop in full hazard gear, one with a military police badge already held up in lieu of greeting.

“What’s it to you?” Nico asked, narrowing his eyes. Hazard suits, MP badges? This seemed a bit over the top for a prank. He just wanted his Teriyaki Chicken, dammit.

“Nico? That doesn’t sound like takeout…” Bianca was behind him, glancing between his suspicious glare and the yellow-clad officers at their door. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry, kids, but you’ve got to come with us,” the officer not holding a badge said next, shoving his thumb behind him at the armored car parked on the curb in front of their house.

“Why? What’s going on?” Bianca asked, letting the first officer lead her out of the doorway in pure shock.

“Let go of me,” Nico ducked out of the grip of the second officer. He grabbed his sister by the back of her shirt and pulling her back towards the safety of the house.

“We gotta go! Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“No! Not until you tell us what’s going on!” Bianca had regained herself by then, slamming the door shut and locking the bolt in place. “We aren’t about to go off with two strangers in hazmat suits without a reason!”

Nico looked around the small entry hallway for anything he could use as a weapon. They hadn’t been violent so far, but if they continued to resist, Nico wasn’t confident they would hold back just because they were younger. He grabbed Bianca’s umbrella out of the coat closet, ignoring her pointed look as he stood by the door.

“I’m sick of this, I’m getting the ram,” the first officer grumbled, and while he and the second bickered, Nico and Bianca looked at each other.

“What the hell is going on?” Nico hissed, glancing from the door to his sister. The voices we gone, and he had a feeling it wasn’t for good.

“I don’t know! Why are they in hazard suits?”

“How should I know? What do we do?”

“Go with them?”

“We have no idea who they are.”

“They have badges, Nico.”

“They could be fake. What kind of cop just comes to the door and demands you follow them? No introduction. We’re obviously not arrested, or they would’ve just come in and read our rights.”

“That truck out there looks pretty official,” Bianca replied, peaking out through the small windows on either side of the front door. “They’re coming back.”

“Alright, kids, listen up. I’m gonna give you till the count of three to open up and come with us, or I’m knocking the door down and taking you myself.”

“We aren’t going anywhere until you tell us what’s going on!” Nico shouted through the door, putting himself between it and his sister.

“One,” Nico held up the umbrella, gripping it so tight his knuckles were white with effort. “Two.”

“Bianca, get back.”

“Not gonna happen, di Angelo.”

“Three!” The door bowed with the force of the first collision, the wood splintering around the hinges and in sparks down the center. It was an old house, after all, and the doors weren’t meant to withstand military-grade battering rams.

It took three, loud, hefty hits for the door to splinter and fall down at their feet, making way for four suited up officers to charge straight for them. Nico swung his umbrella, catching one on the side of the head, only to be clotheslined by another shortly after. He struggled in their grip, elbows and fists flying, trying to land a hit somewhere soft to make them let go.

Bianca wasn’t doing much better behind him. She’d thrown the table holding their keys between them, tripping up the officers going after her and giving her enough time to reach the living room. In her struggle, she’d landed on the remote, maxing the TV’s volume.

They struggled against their captors as Channel Six’s emergency news broadcast described citywide quarantine raids after a suburban mother, aged fifty-six, was hospitalized after a sudden, severe illness that lead her to attacking and brutally mauling a doctor. She only stopped after a security guard rendered her unconscious. Mrs. Fernandez’s picture flashed across the screen as the news anchor asked anyone who may have come in contact with the woman to peacefully turn themselves in for quarantine at the nearest hospital until further notice.  

Mrs. Fernandez smiling with her four children was the last thing Nico saw before cold metal touched the bare skin of his side, and fifty-five thousand volts proceeded to shock him into unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

Waking up was a process. The first time Nico regained consciousness, he was being strapped into a gurney and transferred into an armored vehicle. The officers in hazmat suits were talking over his head, though he only caught snippets of what was said.

“-infected?”

“Dunno-... t showing any earl-”

“Fought back like a bitch-”

“Gonna have a black eye-”

“..wife’s gonna kill m-”

He blacked out against shortly after that, head lolling to the side and fuzzy vision landing on his sister, handcuffed but conscious next to him. She looked terrified.

 

* * *

 

The second time happened as the truck pulled to a stop. Someone outside was talking, voices muffled by the thick, armored walls of the vehicle. The barred back window showed the flashing blue lights of several cop cars, and the orange blockades of a checkpoint.

He thought he could hear helicopters accompanying the large spotlights focused on the road behind them.

Bianca’s hands were clutching one of his on the gurney, her eyes boring into the side of his face.

“Everything’s gonna be alright, _Nicolo_. We’re gonna be fine. Go back to sleep…”

 

* * *

 

 

He woke up for good to the sound of a monotonous beeping resonating from his left, and a cold pain in his arm. His eyes felt crusted shut, and as he raised his fists to scrub at them, he found cords connected to his left arm.

“What the fu-”

“You’re awake!” Nico jumped, groaning as his head pounded harshly in response.

“Bianca...? Pipe down…”

“Sorry…” She sighed, her voice came from his right. Nico could sense harsh lighting behind his eyelids as he scrubbed the gunk out. “Here, lemme help you sit up.”

“What happened?” his mouth felt dry and disgusting, like a small rodent had crawled in and died of dehydration. The pillows behind his back were hard, but kept him propped up with little effort on his part.

“We got quarantined. That’s why they were in hazmat suits.”

“Who?”

“The MPs. They were collecting us. Apparently we were in direct contact with ‘patient zero’.”

“Mrs. Fernandez…”

“....Yeah.”

“Is she-?”

“I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything. Emily’s here though, and the others. The doctors took Navi away, though. She was running a fever.” Navi was the youngest Fernandez, only thirteen. “She hasn’t come back yet.”

Nico finally built up the nerve to open his eyes, groaning as he did so.   

“They haven’t said anything about what we’ve got?”

“Not yet… There’s supposed to be an announcement later today though. They’re just waiting for everyone to wake up. Apparently, you weren’t the only one the MPs got taser happy with. I hope they got reprimanded for that. Scared or not, there’s no need to tase someone three consecutive times after they’ve already hit their head. Water?”

That explained why he felt like he had a hangover from hell, then. He took the proffered paper cup, gulping down the contents like a dying man.

“I need a shower,” Nico grumbled after a few minutes of silence. Something about the sterility of hospital rooms always made him feel dirty, even when he wasn’t the one staying in them. “I can get up, stop fussing,” he smacked his sister’s hands away when she went to help him up. “Fuck, really?”

“What?”

“A hospital gown?”

“Well, we _are_ technically patients.”

“I don’t want my bare ass out for the world to see.”

“Go get in the shower. I’ll go see if I can bother a nurse for some pants, ya big baby,” Bianca laughed, shooing him into the bathroom. “And if I come back to you sprawled out on the floor because you passed out again, you’re getting sponge baths for a week.”

“Fuck off.”

 


	2. Blackout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quarantine ain't all it's cracked up to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so this is once again unbeta'd.  
> I really suck at asking people to read my shit??  
> Plus my friends all started school this week.  
> Whoopsie.
> 
> Edit: Some minor grammatical and spelling mistakes

The quarantine wasn’t as bad as Nico had anticipated. There were around fifty of them on Nico’s hall, mostly teenagers or young adults from what he can tell, and they’d all had recent contact with Mrs. Fernandez.

Nurses and doctors were in and out frequently, checking vitals and monitoring them through their thick glass hazard visors. They brought meals with them three times a day, and sometimes they even brought messages from loved ones on the outside.

Their copious amount of free time was spent playing cards, watching movies, or reading whatever novels the nurses brought in with them from the hospital library, which wasn’t much, since once it was there it had to stay. They weren’t allowed to watch TV or use the internet, strangely enough, which seemed to bother a few of the more tech-savvy kids in the hall, but neither of the di Angelo’s minded too much. Aside from the occasional hacking cough, it was actually rather quiet.

“Got any twos?” Bianca sat across one of the arm chairs of the common area, her legs over one arm and her head pillowed on the other, cards folded in close to her face to ward off the cheating Stoll brothers. Somewhere in the background, someone cleared their throat rather roughly, not quite a cough.

“Go fish,” Connor replied, and Bianca sighed loudly until Nico reached over into the center pile of cards to hand her a new one, rolling his eyes. She grinned cheekily. “Nico! Buddy, got any threes?” He wordlessly handed Connor all three of his threes with a suspicious glare. “Why, thank you!” He laid out the match on the center table, sharing smug looks with his brother.

“Whatever. Bi, got any-” before he could finish, the repetitive clearing of someone’s throat from across the room turned into a loud, hacking cough. Trinity Lau, one of the co-captains from the high school cheerleading team, was bent over a chair, wheezing as violent coughs wracked her small frame. It didn’t take long for the nurses, still decked in their suits, to bustle in, taking her to where ever they took the people who showed even the slightest hint of being ill.

“That’s the fourth one this week,” Bianca murmured, watching the nurses haul out the shivering girl stretched between them. It had started happening their second week there. People would suddenly start getting sick, developing fevers in mere hours, or coughing so hard their abdomens bruised. They were almost always whisked away immediately, and the others would be sent to their rooms.

After the eighth one, they stopped sending everyone else to their rooms, but most went anyway, either upset by the fact that they could be next, or that they’d likely never see that person again. Once someone was taken outside of the hall, it was quickly realized they wouldn’t be coming back.

Originally, the hall had seventy residents. Now, there were forty-nine. It had only taken three weeks for their number to dwindle down, first slowly, then with more volume. The lights had started flickering after the fourth day, sometimes staying off for several minutes, leaving the windowless hall in near complete darkness, the only light coming from the sparse floodlights around the common room.

No one ever came back to the hall once they left, and the residents still there never got any real news. Eventually, loved ones stopped calling, and nurses stopped giving answers about the people they took away.

“Doctor-Patient Confidentiality,” they said, handing out trays of bland food one at a time, in an orderly fashion. “We’re not at liberty to give you details.”

They never even gave them details about what they were being held  _ for.  _ Nico knew it was quarantined, to make sure they weren’t spreading disease, but what kind? Did the doctors even know what would happen? All the residents knew was that you got hauled off the second the doctors thought you might be sick, and that was that. No explanation, nothing. Nothing but a room full of bored kids passing the time playing Go Fish and daydreaming about daylight.  

“I’m going to bed,” Nico stood abruptly, startling the others when his chair scraped loudly over the linoleum.

Quarantine wasn’t as bad as Nico had anticipated.

It was much, much worse.

 

* * *

 

“You think they’ll ever let us out?” Nico asked one day, a month or so into their stay in the hall. He sat in his bed, dressed in a fresh set of stiff hospital pajamas, which consisted only of a plain set of blue cotton pants and a loose white tank top. He hated the way they felt, the pants starched stiff. The scent of bleach hung around no matter how long he wore them.

“They’ve got to, once they figure out we aren’t sick with… whatever’s going around,” Bianca answered, her voice muffled slightly from the privacy curtain strung up between their beds. As close as they were, they both valued their alone time, and the curtain was the closest thing they could get to their own spaces these days.

“But what if they don’t? We’ve been here over a month. If we were going to be sick, we would’ve by now. For god’s sake there’s only twenty of us left, what did we start with? Seventy? We had fifty-two weeks ago. No one’s gotten sick since last Wednesday.”

“I don’t know, Nico.”

“They can’t keep us here forever. The lights can hardly stay on for longer than an hour now without going off. Something’s going on.”

“What do you want me to do?” The privacy curtain swung open suddenly, revealing a very tired looking Bianca. “Let me just walk right out the front door, yeah? Ask nurse no-face out there how long we’re paid up for? See if they’ll let us just call a cab and go home? What do you want me to do, Nico?” Her eyes were hard and weary, rough and red around the edges like she hadn’t slept in days.

“I don’t know! We have to do something,” he snapped back, looking towards the door.

“Do  _ what _ ? If you haven’t noticed, the guys outside? They have guns.”

“I’m not saying we charge out there, I’m saying we need to  _ move _ . Get answers.  _ Something _ !” He grimaced, scrubbing his palms into his eyes and looking back at his sister. They were both tired, and it had been building for a while. There was only so much you could take of the same people day in and day out, after all. They’d been stuck in the same hallway for weeks, with no news, no sunlight, not even a window to glance out of. They were completely isolated, and it was getting to them.

Bianca sighed, disappearing for a moment as she crawled out of her bed. She sat next to him when she returned throwing her arm over his shoulder and pulling him towards her.

“I know,  _ Nicolo,  _ I know,” she murmured, stroking his hair back. Her cheek was warm pressed against his head, her arm a comforting weight across his back. “We’ll figure it out. They can’t keep us here forever, after all.”

“I just want to go home.”

 

* * *

 

The di Angelo’s weren’t the only ones beginning to crack under the stress of continued isolation. Everyone had begun to withdraw, either hiding out in their rooms, privacy curtains drawn tight, or staking out corners of the commons for themselves. No one played cards anymore, there was no laughter from other kids joking and talking over a bad action flick. It was continued silence, not even the few nurses than bustled about from time to time spoke any more than necessary to do their jobs.

No one had been taken away in weeks now.

People wanted to go home. Obviously they weren’t sick, if they’d made it this far without an incident, but the doctors never gave any indication of letting them leave. If anything, security got tighter. They started locking their rooms at night now, making sure no one could wander out, even just to the sitting area, after lights out, which was now much earlier than it had been. Initially, lights out had been at eleven, but moved to ten pretty early on. Now, a full three months into the lock down, lights out was at eight, directly after they were brought dinner.

Nico had a feeling it was more to hide the fact that they were struggling to keep the lights on anymore. Going an hour or more without at least a ten-minute blackout was a rare thing. It was almost comforting when it happened, Nico could almost imagine he was outside at night, with the way the entire hall went deathly still and silent, but then someone would shuffle around and the lights would come on, and the spell was broken.

Everything was tense, too tense. Something was going to give, and soon. Nico just hoped he wouldn’t have to see it when it did.

 

* * *

 

“Nico,” Nico huffed in his sleep, trying to worm his further into the pillow beneath him. It was too early for breakfast; the lights were still off. Whoever it was trying to get his attention could wait until a decent hour. “Nico, come on, get up,” the covers were stripped from him, and cold, sterile air bit at his exposed ankles.  

“Light’s off. Too early. Sleep now.”

“For heaven’s sake, Nico, get up!” Bianca’s voice cut through the haze of sleep like a knife, bringing him to full coherency as the entirety of his body hit the cold ground at once.

“Did you just push me out of bed?” he hissed angrily, rubbing his head where it had had a near miss with the metal leg of the nightstand. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

“Listen!” she whispered, motioning him to follow her to the door. She pressed her ear to it, and signaled for him to do the same.

“I don’t hear anything?”

“Exactly. It’s like eight a.m., usually we’d have been woken up for breakfast by now, but no one’s out there.”

“So? Maybe they’re running a little late.”

“No one came to lock our door last night, either,” to emphasize this, Bianca slid the door open soundlessly, opening their room to the silent hallway. The main lights were off, which wasn’t abnormal at first, until Nico noticed the floodlights were on further down. The nurses hadn’t just missed breakfast; this was a blackout. “Something’s wrong.”

“The lights’ll probably come on in a minute or two. They go out all the time, and never for long,” he reminded her, still working on rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he searched under the bed for his shoes. If he wasn’t going to be awake, he might as well be dressed. “The nurses are probably just waiting for them.”

“They went off last night around three, and never came back on. No one came to lock the doors, Neeks. I don’t think anyone’s coming.”

“What’re you saying? Why were you up at three a.m.?”

“I never went to sleep. I’m saying what you’ve been saying for weeks. We’ve got to do something, right? Now’s the time,” now that he was more awake, Nico could see Bianca had already dressed herself. Her shoes were on, her hair tied up in a tight ponytail, her over shirt buttoned up, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. “If no one’s come in, I don’t think anyone’s out there, either, or else they would’ve come in, don’t you think? If only just to tell us there’d be a delay. Now hurry and get dressed, before the other’s notice what’s up. I don’t wanna be around a bunch of cranky, hungry teenagers in the dark once they figure out food’s not coming.”

She pushed Nico into the bathroom with his clothes, ordering him to get dressed and come out quickly, showering be damned. He obeyed her, if only because she’s a terror in the morning when she’s had sleep. Without? Nico didn’t want to push his luck.

“Ready? Let’s go,” Bianca hardly gave him time to finish lacing up his shoes before she was pushing him into the hall and stepping out after him, sliding their door shut with a soft click. “I went ahead to checked the doors while you were getting dressed. The guards aren’t there, and I couldn’t see any hazmats around. I think it’s deserted.”

They padded as quietly as they could down the lowly light hallway, careful to listen for any sounds that might imply other’s had already woken up. The commons were deserted as they crept through, lit only by the single flood light on the far wall, closest to the door.

“I told you they were gonna try to leave,” a voice startled them just as they reached the doors, causing them to whip around. Connor and Travis were ducked comically behind the couch, shrouded by the shadow it threw across the tile. “That’ll be five bucks.”

“I don’t have five bucks, man.”

“Well, neither do I.”

“Then why did we bet?”

“What the hell are you guys doing out here?” Bianca hissed. “And keep your voice down! We don’t want to wake the others.”

“Why not?”

“You guys are leaving, why shouldn’t everyone?”

“I don’t want them following us. Now tell me why you’re up before I give both of you matching black eyes.”

“Connor and I woke up ‘round seven, like we normally do, and we noticed the door wasn’t locked. We went outside to see if food was out yet-”

“And it wasn’t.”

“-So we went back to our room. Then we saw old Bianca here come out and check the main door, and figured we’d wait up and see what happened.”

“And? What do you plan on doing now that you’ve seen us?” Nico asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes at the brothers. “Gonna wake everyone up and cause a panic because no one’s here?”

“No, well... “

“We won’t wake anyone up if you take us with you,” Connor finished for his brother, shrugging his shoulders as if he wasn’t threatening to incite a bunch of hungry, antsy teenagers with the concept of further abandonment.

“Besides, we wanna know where everyone’s gotten off to.”

“Call it curiosity.”

“...Fine,” Bianca said after a moment, crossing her arms in a way that made it clear she wasn’t happy about it.

“Bi…”

“They’ll wake everyone up if we don’t take them, and we don’t have a lot of time, to start with. I have a bad feeling about why everyone’s gone, and I don’t think a crowd of teenagers is going to make it any better.”

Nico only sighed and nodded, reluctantly agreeing with his sister. The boys behind the couch high fived, withering immediately at the glares they got for the noise it made.

“C’mon then, boys. Let’s get this shit show started.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hi hello again  
> you can find me on tumblr at prettyboydotexe  
> Request shit, say hi, lemme know what you think!  
> Cya


	3. Mania

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if it's yellow leave it the fuck alone

Nico had only seen the outside of the main door from the other side, having been unconscious when he’d arrived, vision limited by the tiny, bullet proof windows on either side. They were large doors without handles that swung open inwards, and couldn’t easily be opened from the inside. Nico assumed that was on purpose, to keep them from getting out before the guards could catch them.

The other side was white. All over white, and covered in plastic casing that crinkled when they brushed against it. Plastic was vacuum sealed around the spaces in the door, and immediately around the entrance to what almost resembled an airlock of sorts. Bright yellow hazard suits hung on hooks to the left. Red lights flashed beyond the airlock door, revealing a room with multiple desks and chairs, papers strewn about haphazardly, not at all what Nico had thought a lab would look like. Beakers with blood samples labeled in meticulous print lined a far wall, out of the reach of the flashing lights. On the far side was an another sealed door, but this one they couldn’t see beyond.

“Alright, let’s see if we can get this open,” Bianca broke the silence as they looked around, approaching the door almost like one would a wild animal. It had a wheel in the center, topped with a large red half circle, and a regular door handle below it.  Trying the door handle was no use, the door only clicked and wouldn’t open. She turned her attention to the crank. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey?”

“What?” One of the Stolls asked.

“Worth a shot,” Nico shrugged, joining his sister and reaching up to pull one of the handles on the wheel. It wouldn’t budge at first, but then after some added pressure, it slowly began to rotate to the left. Bianca joined him, and it turned faster, until it hit something and stopped completely. The seams of the door made an alarming hissing noise, causing the two to jump back into the Stoll’s, which in turn made them stumble. There was the sound of locks being released, and then silence again. The half circle on top of the door was now green.

This time Nico approached, motioning for the others to stay back just in case. He didn’t think anything would happen, but they still didn’t know why everything looked so hastily deserted. A little caution every once in a while never hurt anyone.

The door clicked again, only this time it moved, pushing itself almost with how easily it swung open.

“Onward, I guess,” Nico walked through the doorway, which was low enough to brush the top of his hair as he went. The others would have to duck, being a couple inches taller than him. “What do you think happened in here?”

“What a mess,” Bianca whispered, looking over one of the nearest desks. All of its drawers had been thrown open, its contents spilled out over the floor and the chair. The monitor was hanging off the side by its cord, the screen black.

“Looks like we aren’t the only ones affected by the blackouts,” Travis pondered aloud, only to get smacked on the arm by his brother. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Stating the obvious.”

“You didn’t have to sm-”

“Both of you! Zip it! Or do you want everyone in the building to know we got out?” Nico snapped, glancing in the direction they came from.

“Relax, when’s the last time you ever heard a noise come from outside the hall?” Connor asked, abandoning his slap fight with his brother in favor of examining the wall of samples and x-rays.

“It looks like they left in a hurry,” Nico observed, righting a coffee cup that had been upended, its contents dried up by now, but showing evidence of having dripped off the side of the desk.

“Whatever it was, it looks like the expected to come back,” Bianca nodded towards several lunches still on a few desks, some half eaten, others untouched. “That, or something was so important they said ‘fuck it’ and left without telling us. Anybody want breakfast? I got a muffin and some apple slices.”

“Pass me that bag next to you, I wanna see what kinda lunch big science bucks’ll buy you,” Travis grinned, and Nico tuned the rest of it out. Something felt wrong, off kilter, almost. Something about the room was eerily uncanny, like he’d seen something like this before, and his brain was scrambling trying to remember it.

Obviously, whoever worked here had been interrupted in the middle of the work day, probably right after they’d brought dinner out to the residents. Papers were strewn about, like the day had been interrupted by an unexpected fire drill, but the process of exiting the room was exceptionally hurried. Definitely not a calm and collected evacuation, more sudden, messy. Uncoordinated, as several chairs were lying on their backs, as if the occupants had stood suddenly and knocked them over. Someone’s cell phone was still on their desk, either asleep or dead, Nico couldn’t tell.

He traced his fingers over the corner of a desk, eyes on the papers on top of it. Certain words stuck out to him, though his dyslexic brain struggled to interpret a fair few.

       

_Hyperparasite, pathogenic, O. Unilateralis.  Variant. Sensu lato._

 

Nico picked up that particular paper, which turned out to be a part of a packet, held together by a large paperclip. There was a bag hung on the back of the chair, so he took it, emptying it of anything he dubbed unnecessary, so he could fit the clipped packet and a few other important-looking documents inside. He was about to move on to the others when a file caught his eye. It was labeled A. Fernandez, and had CLASSIFIED stamped across it in large, red letters. He didn’t even think twice about taking it, shoving it alongside the other papers and packets into his pilfered bag.

“Nice of you to join us, find anything interesting while you were over there being snoopy?” Bianca poked at him as he approached her and Travis, shouldering the bag. “What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you about it later, you guys ready to g-”

“Uh, guys…” Travis interrupted quietly, his voice carrying from across the room, nearest the sealed outer door. “I think you should see this.”

“What’s up?” Connor asked, jumping off the desk he was perched on, tossing an abandoned orange from hand to hand. Travis stepped back into the range of the emergency lights, looking like he’d seen a ghost. “Trav?”

“I know why they left so quickly,” he whispered, pointing at the door. They all followed his arm to the door, only to notice it wasn’t sealed at all. It was cracked open slightly, prevented from closing by a scrap of dark fabric by the hinge. Closer inspection revealed it wasn’t really a scrap.

“That’s a person,” Nico murmured, pushing the door slightly. The fabric was actually the hem of a man’s slacks, the beige fabric stained black by a large, gaping wound at his upper thigh. He was laying on his stomach, arms outstretched like he was trying to pull himself across the floor, head face down. Speckles of blood decorated the back of his white coat. “What the hell…”

“Nico?” Bianca was next to him, looking over his shoulder, seeing the body before he could block her. “ _Dio mio._ ”

“Is he..?”

“Dead? Definitely,” Nico prodded the man’s leg with his foot, then continued out the door when he didn’t move. “His stiff as a board,” another hard prod flipped the body over. Behind him, Connor puked. He coughed as Bianca pounded him on the back.

The man’s face was the picture of agony, his chest covered in a series of bullet holes. Yellow growths crusted around them, looking almost like popcorn kernels. His eyes were wide and unseeing, clouded grey and dark under the lids.

Nico remembered what the chaos in the room reminded him of. He hoped he was wrong. That kind of thing didn’t happen in real life, right? This was reality, not some cheesy Hollywood movie.

“We should get out of here,” Bianca whispered to him, standing between the Stolls and the corpse. “Before whatever did that comes back.”

“I don’t know the way out,” Nico reminded her. Once they left this room, he had no idea where to go. “I was out cold.”

“It’s pretty straight forward,” Bianca replied. “I’ll direct. You lead, I don’t wanna leave these two on their own.”

Nico shoved the body out of the doorway, glancing back at the brothers to make sure neither would pass out.

“Watch the threshold. It’s raised,” he warned, stepping over and holding the pressure door open for the others. This new room was a long hallway, lined with regular doors, though none were marked EXIT. He glanced back to Bianca, she just motioned to keep going.

Most of the doors were windowless, but a few had narrow, glass panels at the center, and some even had label plaques. Most were simple, hospital like labels; dispensary, housekeeping, operating theatres A-C, etc. A few, however, had their plaques marked out or removed entirely, leaving a paler square of plaster or wood in their place. A small directory on the wall several doors down that he had to squint to read in the darkness labeled the unit as the HDU.

“HDU?” Connor read the directory, frowning. He sure recovered quickly.

“High Dependency Unit,” Bianca replied, her expression was grim. “Whatever they think we might have, it isn’t good.”

“Let’s keep moving.”

“Yeah…”

Nico hiked his bag higher on his shoulder, glancing around periodically as they walked down the faintly lit hallway. There were flood lights every couple yards, staggered parallel to each other on the plain white walls of the unit. Their footsteps on the tile grated on Nico’s nerves. For some reason, he felt like they needed to be as quiet as possible. The hairs on the back of his neck were on end, his senses on high alert. His instincts screamed at him to find some kind of weapon. Anything.

“Stop,” he bit out, putting his arm out to stop the group.

“What? Did’ja see something?” Travis asked in an exaggerated whisper. Out of all of them, he seemed to be the most agitated.

“I think we should look around, find supplies or something.”

“What? Are you crazy? We need to get out of here,” Bianca hissed, frowning at her brother in confusion.

“And what if whatever did that to Bill Nye the Science Guy over there comes back? How do you wanna deal with that? Throw apples at them until they go away?”

“What do you mean ‘whatever did that to him’? He was shot. Obviously it was an MP.”

“And the giant chunk taken out of his leg?” Nico asked, staring her down. She could rationalize gunshots all she wanted, but giant, gaping wounds on the back of someone’s thigh? The growths? That was out of their league. When she didn’t reply, he continued on. “There were MPs all over the place, right? And this is a hospital. One of these doors has to have something, even if it’s just a security office.”

“Fine, but we need to hurry,” she sighed, already walking past him to try one of the doors nearest to them. The first couple were locked, mainly ones with unmarked or missing plaques. For some reason, that didn’t surprise Nico. Something about this whole ward seemed wrong.

“This one’s already open,” Nico turned to where Connor and Travis were. They stood in front of a cracked door, one of the windowless, unlabeled ones. It appeared to have not been closed all the way in the panic, if he had to guess. “I’m not going in. I made my discovery for the day.”

“I’m with him.”

“I’ll go,” Nico sighed, he didn’t blame them at all. He’d been disturbed the first time he’d seen a dead body, after all. Granted, his first hadn’t been that gruesome. All the same, you got used to it when your father worked in the morgue. Sometimes, his work just came home with him.

He had to push the door open as far as it could in order to get any visibility, as it was far too small to get its own floodlights installed, and almost immediately he was hit with the smell of something foul.

At first glance, the room looked totally normal. The inside looked like an office, a desk in the very center, bracketed on either side by two large filing cabinets. A rolling chair sat behind the desk, while two regular wooden chairs sat in front of it. Pictures and framed newspaper clippings lined the wall, and on the far wall was a large cork board covered in various papers, pictures, and graphs. He couldn’t make them out from the distance and low light, so he began to look closer.

Until his foot hit something soft, too soft to be one of the extra chairs to his left. He looked down to see another body, this one in a suit, clutching something in its hands.

“Don’t come in,” he warned, gingerly stepping over the body to make it to the other side of the filing cabinets, then the desk. The computer was off, but the drawers were unlocked when Nico tried them. The first cabinet held nothing but files and papers, nothing of interest as Nico thumbed through them. He had to rely mostly on touch due to the low light, and so far all he was getting was paper. It wasn’t until he got to the last drawer on the second cabinet that he found anything. To the back, nearly covered completely by the crowding of files around it, he found a small key. It was the only one on the tiny ring, and glinted in the low light. “I found a key, but I have no idea what it goes to.”

“Times ticking,” Bianca replied, already sounding agitated being out there for the little time they were. Nico wondered vaguely if she knew more than she was letting on about what had happened. She was even more desensitized to death than he was, and the dark had never bothered her as a kid. Things weren’t adding up. “We gotta keep moving.”

“I’m working on it,” a quick search of the desk came up empty, none of the drawers had locks, and none of them contained anything more useful than office supplies and planners. He moved to the wall nearest the cabinet he’d just searched, and towards the floor, found a vent cover that seemed to move when he ran his fingers over the edges. It came off easily when he pried at it, and, from what he could tell, revealed a small door.

“Nico, come on.”

“Just hold on,” he bit out, fumbling to find the lock and fit the key in. It took a few tries, and he cursed after stabbing his palm, but he eventually got it unlocked. It was obviously a safe, and the insides contained mostly papers. Confidential files, he guessed, but something else as well. His fingers brushed cold metal and instantly latched.

When he got back outside of the office, he could more clearly see what he’d found. A nightstick, one of the retractable ones security guards kept in their belts, right next to the tasers they used to knock out teenagers.

“I hope you found something good, ‘cause we gotta move,” Bianca frowned, already pulling the Stolls up from where they’d sat against the wall.

“Alright, alright, let’s go,” Nico took head again, pulling the baton out as far as it would go. It wasn’t much of a weapon, wouldn’t do much damage in a real fight, but it was as good as it got right now, and they’d have to deal. It did do a little to ease his growing sense of dread, however. At least it was something.

The first exit of any kind they encountered was an elevator, but that wouldn’t work, for obvious reasons. Fortunately, next to it was a sign pointing towards emergency stair access. As it turned out, the stairwell looping down the side of the building had windows, letting the in natural lighting. It was the first bits of sunlight Nico had seen in months. Already, he felt his anxiety easing. There wasn’t much to see outside, only one of the few patient courtyards several floors down. It was, predictably, deserted.

Bianca said she remembered coming in on the third floor, and the door was marked as the sixteenth, so they began their trek downward in silence. Only the occasional scuff of hospital shoes on the concrete stairs could be heard, their conversation shortened to nothing but the occasional hand motion. Bianca never once seemed to relax, even as the sun warmed her skin and made her hair shine.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of walking in slightly elevated circles, they reached the door marked with a large, blocky three.

“It should be a straight shot from here through the lobby. We should have a better idea of what’s going on from there,” Bianca said quietly as they left the stairwell, now leading the way and leaving Nico to the Stolls. “Hopefully, we can find a way back home and call dad. Maybe he knows what’s going on-” she stopped suddenly, both verbally and physically, causing Nico to scramble to keep himself and the others from knocking into her.

“Bi?”

“Shh,” she stood stalk still, eyes wide as she stared forward. She slowly inclined her head, and Nico followed her gaze. In front of the lobby doors was a person, but this time, they were standing.

Someone dressed in a hazmat suit stood hunched in front of the doors, seeming to watch the outside idly. Silently, the teenagers began to back up, the Stolls guided by Nico’s grip on the backs of their shirts. They ducked back into the stairwell, anxiety back up to peak levels.

“Okay, so, we’re not alone anymore,” Travis whispered, eyes wide. “It’s probably just a nurse just doing the rounds?”

“Yeah, so we’ll just wait until they pass on so we can leave,” Connor finished, looking hopefully around the door frame.  

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Bianca said gravely, peeking her head around to look further into the lobby. They were still there, back to them, unmoving. Nico was already moving out from their hiding spot before she noticed and tried to grab him. He approached the figure quickly and quietly, stopping several feet behind them before speaking. “Nico! Nico, no! Come back here right now!”

“Excuse me?” the figure straightened up all at once before hunching over further into a position that looked rather uncomfortable. “Are you okay?” he gripped the baton tightly behind him in a fist, so tightly his knuckles flashed white under his olive skin. He was yanked back very suddenly as they turned around, and just in time, as they struck out was a surprising force at the empty air where he had just been.

The mask was torn half off its face, the Plexiglas cracked and shattered. He could see flashes of grey skin, and festering blisters. It lurched forward again, and with it came the scent of death and mold. Nico’s mind quickly supplied him with visions of every zombie movie he’d ever seen, the corpses on the floor above them. He couldn’t help it, as he struggled to get his footing to keep up with his sisters insistent pulling on his arm. He laughed, a startled, terrified snort, almost panicked in its pitch.

“What the _fuck_!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr at prettyboydotexe

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> I'm working on it


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